A wireless local area network (WLAN) may be formed by one or more access points (APs) that provide a shared wireless communication medium for use by a number of client devices or stations (STAs). Each AP, which may correspond to a Basic Service Set (BSS), periodically broadcasts beacon frames to enable any STAs within wireless range of the AP to establish and/or maintain a communication link with the WLAN. Once a STA is associated with the AP, the AP and the STA may exchange data frames. When the STA receives a data frame from the AP, the STA is to transmit an acknowledgment (ACK) frame back to the AP to acknowledge receipt of the data frame.
A block acknowledgement procedure may allow the STA to acknowledge receipt of multiple data frames using a single ACK frame. More specifically, the STA may use a block acknowledgment (BA) frame to acknowledge receipt of a plurality of data frames and/or a number of aggregated data frames, thereby reducing the number of acknowledgement frames transmitted to the AP (and thus conserving capacity of the shared wireless medium). More specifically, when the block acknowledgement procedure does not use fragmentation, a compressed block acknowledgement (CBA) frame may be used to acknowledge a plurality of aggregated data frames. The CBA frame includes an 8-octet bitmap (e.g., containing 8*8=64 bits) that may be used to acknowledge receipt of up to 64 individual data frames. By limiting the CBA frame's bitmap to 64 bits, the transmit duration of the CBA frame may be minimized (e.g., compared with non-compressed BA frames) to reduce traffic on the wireless medium.
When an aggregated data frame includes decoding errors, it would be desirable to minimize the amount of time that a wireless device defers access to the wireless medium associated with the WLAN.